


From Your Hand to Mine

by FannyT



Category: Avengers (Comics), Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And a smidge of Civil War speculation I guess, Captain America: Civil War Trailer, I kind of deviated from the prompt a lot, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired By Tumblr, Once again sort of, Other, Sharing a Body, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FannyT/pseuds/FannyT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, Natasha finds marks on her skin and doesn't know how they got there. In time, she realises that the marks belong to someone else -- that her skin maps another's. </p>
<p>Eventually, they make contact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Your Hand to Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedOrchid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedOrchid/gifts).



> This started out as a conversation between me and Redorchid about a prompt on tumblr (found [here](http://natroze.tumblr.com/post/140828810937/princess-tuna-let-gavin-free-soulmate-au)). 
> 
> I then wrote an almost completely different story.

In 1977—twenty years after the Red Room took her, fifteen years after she failed her mission outside the coast of Cuba and fourteen years after she aimed a gun at the head of President John F. Kennedy—Natasha’s skin starts showing bruises and marks she can’t explain. They never hurt and they fade quickly, but their appearance bothers her. She’s been the Black Widow for over a decade, and she doesn’t bruise easily any longer. 

She hopes it’s temporary, but the marks keep coming. Not often, and never anything very large, but they’re still there as a constant reminder of something she has no control over.

* * *

In 1979, she finds a mark on her face one day—small and round and faintly red. She figures it’s a budding zit and ignores it, but three days later her entire body is covered in spots. It looks like the marks after chickenpox, but she had the disease already as a child and she doesn’t have any other symptoms. 

The marks earn her two weeks in quarantine, Red Room scientists coming in daily to draw blood and perform tests. They never manage to find out what is wrong with her, and as the marks fade away in time—and she is much too valuable an asset to be kept locked up—they eventually let her out. 

She checks her skin daily for the next three months, but the spots don’t reappear.

* * *

Over the next few years, the marks on her skin gradually change. There are still bruises and quickly fading scars, mainly on the knees and elbows, but sometimes, the marks seemed to be almost designed by a human hand. There’s a pattern of lines on the inside of her wrist one day that she could swear would have to have been drawn. And one day, she steps out of the shower and sees a grid of tic-tac-toe just above her right knee. 

Fascinated, she looks closer. The lines are faint, as though from welts made by a ballpoint pen pressing a little too hard or by a nail scraping down tanned skin, and the grid is filling up fast with noughts and crosses. As she watches, a new grid starts forming beside the old, and without really realising what she’s doing, she reaches down and scratches out an X in one of the squares. 

There’s a long pause, but eventually, an O forms beside it. 

They play on, Natasha and her invisible opponent, filling up two more squares on her leg. There is another pause, then, and just as Natasha wonders if her ghostly friend is gone for good, words start forming around the fading tic-tac-toe squares. 

**HI. I’M CLINT. WHAT’S YOUR NAME?**

* * *

_In 1984, sitting underneath the benches in the Grand Tent, the ground around him littered with yesterday’s popcorn, Clint learns that his imaginary friend has a name: Natasha. It sounds foreign and exciting._

_Her handwriting is pretty and grown-up, and he knows very little about her, but he thinks that she probably gets hurt sometimes. He has a long scar on his arm he didn’t get on his own, and another one on his back, and since her words show up on his skin, the origin of those scars must be on her as well. He wonders if she’s safe._

_He wonders if she’s real._

* * *

In the first year since they start talking, writing messages on their skin and watching the answers come back as faint lines, fading fast, Natasha learns a lot of things about Clint. She learns the things he tells her: he lives on a circus in rural America, is almost nine years old, has a brother named Barney, likes dogs and apples, and wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. She also learns some things he doesn’t tell her: he is left-handed, he is at least partially deaf, and someone is beating him. 

She finds herself lying awake, worrying about this American boy, this stranger who she’s never met.

* * *

Years pass. Clint grows up. He becomes an act in his own right in the circus, talks about life outside of the moving carnival trade and forms vague plans for seeing the world one day. He's changing all the time, while she stays the same.

Natasha still looks in her twenties, and sometimes she actually feels like it, too, when she’s trading jokes back and forth with Clint, their arms filling up with words and drawings. When she’s on missions, however, they keep to radio silence, and her days darken with the pressure of the Red Room coming down on her. The world has changed so much, but hers still feels like it’s stuck in 1960. Her employers are fighting the same war they lost many years ago, and although Natasha’s targets change, the goal is always the same. Chaos. Strife. Creating power vacuums for her leaders to fill. 

She’s been fighting for so long. She doesn’t believe in any of it any longer. 

She’s not sure she ever did.

* * *

In 1999, Natasha’s on a mission in Rome, and everything is going wrong. 

Her target has protection she wasn’t expecting: SHIELD, that annoying American group of simplistic do-gooders. They’re recruiting younger and younger, it seems—the boy currently chasing her through the city is barely in his twenties. 

She really doesn’t want to hurt him, but despite his age, he is very good. He’s keeping pace with her, and he almost managed to surprise her when she first went after her target. If she’d been just a little bit slower, he’d have had her. 

She’s going to have to take him down if she wants to get out of here alive. 

She skids around a corner and then turns, ready to attack when he follows her. But he’s good, this SHIELD boy—as she waits for him to arrive, she suddenly hears something above her and looks up just as he jumps down on her, a knife already drawn in one hand. 

She moves aside, but too slow. He manages to knock her off her feet and slashes down, and she blocks his strike only at the last moment, grabbing the blade with reinforced gloves. It’s not quite good enough, and she feels the edge bite into her right palm, but she manages to wrench the knife away and pry it out of his fingers. Switching grip quickly, she stabs upwards, and although he turns his head quickly, the point slices a thin line across his cheek. 

She has him now. She has him, and he knows it. He looks back at her, something desperate now in his face, and then his eyes widen as they focus on her cheek. 

“Natasha?” he gasps.

She’s thrown. She goes by Black Widow for all missions, and for those few people that manage to dig deeper, there are countless cover stories in place. _Natasha_ should be buried far too deep for any American agency to find. 

The boy holds up his right hand. There’s a thin line across the palm, matching the spot where she can begin to feel blood trickling across her own. 

“It’s me,” the boy says. “Natasha, it’s me.”

The knife drops from her fingers. 

“Clint?”

* * *

Switching sides turns out to be easier than expected. She’s been wanting a way out for years, and SHIELD seemingly has a lot more clout than their apple-pie naivety would have people believe. And although the endless meetings are a bore, and the polygraphs a joke for someone who learnt her lies in the Red Room before she even turned ten, she finds it all worth it, in the end, to stand free from the walls that have held her captive for half a century. 

After one particularly annoying meeting with Nick Fury and Alexander Pierce, playing Bad Cop and Cloying Cop respectively, also accompanied by Junior Assistant Coulson taking notes in what Natasha considered a rather sarcastic way, she finds Clint waiting for her. 

“So,” he says, grinning, “I guess you aren’t actually a bodyguard.”

“Had to explain away all the scars you kept seeing somehow,” Natasha says lightly. “And I guess you left the circus some time ago.”

“Got recruited a few years back.”

“I can see why. You’re an excellent liar.”

“You’re better.”

“Well, I’ve practised longer.” Natasha hesitates briefly. “Have you told them? About—” She raises a hand, showing the scar still visible on her palm. 

Clint shakes his head. “No. They just think I turned you. I’m getting a lot of credit for that, actually.”

“Ooh, well, lucky you.” She smiles, leaning back against the wall. “So, what do you think happens now?”

“Well, if they’d allow it, I still haven’t found an official partner.” Clint grins at her. “What do you say? Want to get some matching scars?”

She grins back at him. 

“That does sound like a plan.”

* * *

They’re sent on their first covert op together a few weeks after Natasha’s officially accepted into SHIELD—with that a roaring success, they’re quickly made a permanent partnership. People are at first impressed, then stunned, then incredulous. Natasha and Clint work together as one, managing to exchange information without anyone ever finding out how and somehow keeping in contact even when deep undercover. 

Rumours about telepathy start growing within SHIELD, and when mutants eventually start coming out of the woodwork, they’re both sent to Professor X for testing. He has nothing to report, and Natasha and Clint are smugly silent. 

They rise through the ranks of SHIELD quickly, always together, always connected.

* * *

In 2002, Clint meets Laura in a bar. 

He’s on his way to refill his and Natasha’s drinks when Natasha sees a woman walk straight into him, spilling her drink on his shirt. She sits back and smiles, watching Clint go from annoyed to interested to charming, and when the woman eventually takes Clint’s hand, Natasha looks down at her own palm and sees the numbers form. 

“So, that’s something,” she says, as he finally returns with their beers. “She seems to have got your interest.”

“Well, I was pissed at first,” Clint says, his eyes still on the woman. “But she seems fun. Clumsy, though.”

“She did it on purpose,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, Clint. Sometimes you’re really not a very good spy at all.”

He looks at her, surprised, and then back across the bar at the woman. Natasha smiles into her beer.

* * *

Three years later, the words _WE’RE PREGNANT_ stand out in happy all caps on Natasha’s right arm, and she laughs out loud. 

It’s strange—they have cell phones and ear pieces and another dozen means of contacting each other now, but for some reason, they still share important information like this. It’s more personal, somehow. Heart speaking to heart. 

Over the next half year, Natasha covers her arms with suggestions for names—boys on the left, girls on the right. When Clint and Laura decide on Cooper, she’s quite offended.

* * *

In 2012, Loki comes to earth and takes Clint. 

Natasha has her mission. There’s a protocol in place, and there are heavy hitters to pull together. They need to save the earth, Fury tells her. But before she does any of that, Natasha drives to Laura, heart beating painfully hard in her chest. At every red light, she leans down to scratch out three parallel lines on the back of her knee, on her ankle and in the crook of her elbow: _Are you all right?_ They’ve been working together for over ten years; by this point, they have a fully realised code for use during missions. 

She doesn’t receive a reply. 

When she gets to Laura, the family’s already packed for the trip to a safe house. Clint has made sure to bury all ties to his family, hiding the information even from SHIELD, but there are also redundancies in place for situations like this. There’s one plan in place for if Clint’s compromised, and one for if Natasha is, each hidden from the other.

“Any word?” Laura asks, after bundling the kids into the back of Natasha’s civilian car—the Volvo she uses when she wants to inconspicuous. “Have you heard anything?”

“No one knows anything,” Natasha says, trying not to let her own panic bleed over into her voice. “He’s been taken. Probably compromised. That’s all we know for now. No one’s heard anything else.”

“No one?” Laura says, glancing down at Natasha’s bare arm. “Not even you?”

They’ve never discussed this before. Natasha has always figured that Laura knows, but she’s never known how to raise the issue, or if it’s even necessary. She and Clint have had this connection all his life, this strange intimacy, and she’s never known why—and in this moment, she wonders suddenly what that’s like for Laura. 

But Laura’s looking at her, and there’s nothing in her expression but worry and a fleeting sense of hope. 

“Nothing,” Natasha admits, and sees Laura's face fall. “It’s never happened before. We’ve always—no matter what kind of pressure he’s been under, in whatever kind of dangerous situation—he’s always responded. He can always respond. I’m—” She feels herself start to shake and takes a deep breath. “I’m worried, Laura.”

Laura is silent for some time. 

“No matter what kind of danger he’s been in over the years,” she says finally, “you know, I always felt that he was safe. Because you were always there, watching over him, just a scratch of the skin away. And I know you’d do anything to protect him.” She looks up at Natasha. “You will, won’t you?”

“I will,” Natasha promises, a heavy weight in her chest.

* * *

Natasha wears out several pens during the time of Loki’s invasion. She scrawls messages into her skin with increasing frequency and fear, moving onto arms and hands in order to ensure Clint is seeing them. She goes from writing with a pen, those fleeting messages that disappear almost as quickly as they come, to scratching deeply with her nails to, desperately, cutting three lines into her calf one day. 

She starts to wonder if the connection is even there. If Clint isn't responding any longer because he can't. If maybe whatever strange inexplicable bond this was, Loki and his damned Asgard magic has broken it. 

(She’s going to _kill_ him.)

When she and Clint finally meet in battle and she sees marks she makes on him show up on herself, the relief almost knocks her out. She pulls herself together, punches every last piece of mind magic out of him, then stands there, breathing deeply, looking down at Clint’s unconscious form. 

_Idiot_ , she writes on her own arm, just to see it show up on his.

* * *

In 2015, Clint retires from SHIELD. And for a while, everything is peaceful. Natasha is carrying on the Avengers torch with Steve, and keeping Clint updated by messages written on her palm during boring meetings. They still use code sometimes, but these days they mostly just write out their messages plainly. Natasha knows how to keep the words hidden, and Clint doesn’t have to hide any longer. 

Then all hell breaks loose again, as it does so often with them. There’s division within the Avengers and a general choosing of sides. It’s Avenger vs Avenger now, two teams facing off like in one of the cheesy American movies she was forced to watch as a child. And one day, Natasha finds herself standing in an open lot, Iron Man and the others by her side, and staring across at Clint lined up with the Cap’s team. 

This is where it’s all been leading up to, really. 

She looks down at her hand, and sees the word written out plainly. 

_Ready?_

Because the thing is, she never needed to choose. Her side has been chosen since that first moment she realised there was another person inhabiting her skin with her; it's always been the two of them, whatever comes. It always will be. And no matter how much the others know or think they know about her, no one but Clint will ever know just how good a spy she is.

She grins across at Clint. “Always,” she mouths.


End file.
